


Shadows

by sunflowerbright



Series: Christmas Prompts 2011 [1]
Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Gen, Set pre-series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 01:24:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerbright/pseuds/sunflowerbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guy and Isabella, trying to find their way after losing everything</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Christmas-prompt for novindalf who wanted: 'a fic about Guy and Isabella after they were exiled from Locksley' (on livejournal)

 

 

It starts raining. Guy can’t remember it ever raining this much before, not even back in England, but now that he doesn’t have a house and a roof to keep him shelter, it seems like it rains all the time.

He huddles under his too-large cloak, Isabella pressed into his side. It doesn’t offer much warmth, and only little comfort, but it’s all the warmth and comfort they have, so they take it. She’s so small, her little hand slipped into his and clutching tightly. Her skin is as cold as their parents dead bodies ( _no, wait, they would have been warm. Burning to death, you die warm at least. Not like standing in the rain in the autumn, with only one ragged coat and a sister to keep warm too_ ), and it makes him worried for a second, before he thinks that maybe his own hand has gone so cold it has lost all feeling. There is a whole plethora of poetic metaphors there, something his French mother would have loved to dwell on, but the rain is hammering on his back now, slipping down the edge of the hood and soaking his face and he pulls Isabella along, looking for somewhere they can stand without drowning. He finds a cart standing up against a wall, a place they potentially need to share with mice and dirt, but it’s (somewhat) dry and he lets Isabella climb under it first before following, his long and lanky body needing to lie down on the side, to be able to fit under there.

It’s uncomfortable for a moment, and it keeps being so, but as soon as he’s settled Isabella crawls and shifts until her small and shivering form is pressed against his chest. He drapes the cloak over both of them and tries to ignore the rain beating down on the wood above and the small drops falling through the cracks and landing on skin and clothes, slowly soaking their already wet forms.  

“Guy?” Isabella’s voice breaks the non-silence ( _the rain is too loud for there ever to be silence here. The rain and his thoughts_ ), and he thinks this might be the first time she’s spoken ever since they left.

“Where are we gonna go?”

It’s an innocent enough question, a logical one even, but it still burns like fire zipping through his otherwise frozen body. He wants to push her away and run into the rain again – _water quenches fire –_ or smash something with his hand, twist and fold until the black wood of a burning house cracks beneath his fingers. He wants to run all the way back to Nottingham and watch the flames lick the air, watch as the villagers watches, unable and unwilling to do anything about the horror in front of their eyes.  

It burns, because…

“I don’t know,” he says, his voice oddly quiet for someone this filled with rage, and Isabella sobs herself to sleep, the beat of the rain a poor substitute for her mother’s soothing voice.

 

oOo

 

At least he’s old enough to work, and before a month has passed, Guy looks at least five years older, worn-out and dirty, the skin on his hands rough from lifting and heaving instead of wielding a bow or a sword. If it’s mucking out the stables or scrubbing floors alongside his sister, he’s come to do it without protest, no matter how meager the pay. The first week of starvation was horrible enough, and his sister’s cheeks are still hollow and too thin. He remembers the poor farmers coming to his mother, asking for help with their ill children or wives after a bad harvest, only to be told that the only cure for that was food. She’d given them food when they had some to spare, but her words still echo in his ears: _Starving is one of the greatest curses a man can live through._

He’s lived through it alright, and he doesn’t ever want to again, even if it means degrading himself and his sister this way.

They finally get enough money to get them to France, only to be met with closed doors and pitiful stares. He’s beyond angry as his mother’s brother, _their uncle_ , simply hands them a coin and pats Isabella on the head as if she was a dog, before telling them to _‘kindly run off now’_. He hurtles a rock at the closed door just because, and takes Isabella’s hand in his as they leave. It feels burning hot and limp, and it isn’t until they find an inn to rest that he realizes how pale she really looks.

“That’s a fever she’s gotten,” the inn-keep says and good-naturedly hands them an extra blanket. “Best to let her rest. And give her something to drink. Maybe something strong.”

At least that’s what Guy thinks the man says, as he mainly spoke in what sounded like a broken version of his mother’s native language, but he dutifully packs Isabella into all the heavy blankets and his coat, letting her have the narrow bed as she sleeps. She looks like she could fit in his pocket, oh so small, buried beneath all those layers of cloth. She’s still pale, her breath coming out in wheezy gasps and he’s hit with the sudden notion that she might die.

For the son of a healer, he really knows next to nothing about the art. He hates himself for the brief thought in his mind that acknowledges the fact that it would be easier to get a job and get around without having to drag his sister with him. In equal measures of self-imposed punishment for that thought and worry about her health, he keeps himself awake through-out the night, sitting on the cold and hard floor and trying to remember his mother’s voice.

Luckily, Isabella’s fever breaks the next day, and Guy is so relieved he can barely breathe, and then relieved that he _is_ relieved and not disappointed. He pushes that thought aside along with the one from last night, buried in a chest with a lock alongside the images of his parents.

She’s still weak though, and needs to stay in bed longer and he practically begs the inn-keeper to let him work there in exchange for staying a few weeks more. Even if, as the inn-keeper says, ‘ _they’re scruffy and part-English’_ , he still obliges and it takes Guy a long while to get over his indignation and realize that there had been a compliment hidden somewhere in that statement. He’s just unable to see it.

“Why does no one want us?” Isabella asks the same night, as he’s finished with his duties and has finally been able to make her eat something. He wonders when she stopped bossily demanding everything, and started asking all the hard questions instead.

He wants to lie to her, like their father did when they were so young, when Isabella thought she would grow up to be a princess and everything would be bright and shining and happy. Their father never could resist the look of joy in her eyes when he told her another fairy-tale, but Guy isn’t their father _(traitor)_ and they aren’t safely home.

“Because people just don’t care,” he says and feels a cold wall of ice close around his heart.

It forms a tiny crack as Isabella reaches out a hot and shaking hand to gently touch his shoulder. Like he was the one who needed comforting. It’s not nearly enough to melt a whole block of ice _(would the flames that killed his parents be enough?)_ but it’s there, and the crack stays.

Possibly for a very long time.


End file.
